Pointless (TV Series 2009– ) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error A game show where contestants aim to score the fewest points possible by guessing the least popular answers given by people in polls on various subjects. Stars: a list of 26 titles created 15 Dec 2011 a list of 22 titles created 13 Jan 2012 a list of 32 titles created 05 Feb 2012 a list of 1188 titles created 08 May 2015 a list of 21 titles created 1 month ago Search for " Pointless " on Amazon.com Connect with IMDb Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Pointless Celebrities (TV Series 2010) Game-Show Celebrities try to find the most obscure answers to win money for their chosen charities.

Stars: Alexander Armstrong, Richard Osman, Anton du Beke The Chase I (TV Series 2009) Game-Show A Game Show where contestants must compete against 'The Chasers' in a variety of questions in order to win money. Stars: Bradley Walsh, Jenny Ryan, Mark Labbett The long-running words and numbers game. Stars: Carol Vorderman, Richard Whiteley, Susie Dent The original British version of the quiz show that's become a worldwide hit. Host Chris Tarrant asks hopeful contestants a series of questions, each more difficult than the last. As the ... See full summary » Stars: Chris Tarrant, Eamonn Holmes, Stephen Fry You've Been Framed! (TV Series 1990) Comedy | Reality-TV Surreal comedy from the mind of Harry Hill, featuring his unique observations on the world's funniest accidents as captured on smartphones, video cameras, webcams & CCTV. If you've filmed a... See full summary » Stars: Harry Hill, Jeremy Beadle, Lisa Riley British general knowledge quiz show which spawned imitations around the world, notably in the USA.

Stars: Anne Robinson, Jon Briggs, Adam Woodyatt Member of the public go head to head in a series if obstacle courses to win 10,000 Stars: Richard Hammond, Amanda Byram, Joanna Chappell TV Burp (TV Series 2001) Comedy Harry Hill stars in this surreal comedy show, revolving around the previous week's shows on British television. Stars: Harry Hill, Steve Benham, Brian Belo Room 101 (TV Series 1994) Comedy | Talk-Show Comedy talk/game show in which celebrities present an argument for their pet hates in various categories to be banished forever to Room 101. Stars: Paul Merton, Frank Skinner, Nick Hancock A group of five strangers, each an amateur chef, compete to host the best dinner party, each party solely for the competitors and to be held on consecutive evenings. With a set amount of ... See full summary » Stars: Dave Lamb, Lesley Joseph, Bill Buckley A game show hosted by Ant and Dec filled with stunts, sketches, and special guest appearances.

Stars: Anthony McPartlin, Declan Donnelly, Kirsty Gallacher Game show in which contestants try to guess well-known phrases or sayings from animated picture puzzles. Stars: Roy Walker, Nick Weir, Stephen Mulhern Edit Storyline A game show where contestants aim to score the fewest points possible by guessing the least popular answers given by people in polls on various subjects. 24 August 2009 (UK) See more » Company Credits Did You Know? Trivia During a show, contestants were asked to name what food each type of food was. One option was Parmesan, which two contestants answered correctly as cheese. However, the two still got 100 points, as all the people surveyed knew the correct answer. See more » Quotes (United Kingdom) – See all my reviews I am a bit of a saddo, as I really like this show when I catch it. Alexander Armstrong is an excellent front man for it and I really like him as a performer and was surprised to see him doing this. He has a special quality which comes across to the viewer (well this viewer anyway). The premise is that people try to find a pointless answer to the question posed thereby scoring as low as possible.

Gentle humour is employed throughout and I like the fact that no-one is humiliated or made fools of in any way. I feel that the programme would benefit from a little faster pace but that is a minor quibble. It is almost educational sometimes too as one finds out facts one did not know before. Long may it last. Well I am adding to my review 16 months on and I am still addicted to it. If anything more so. It has really hit it's stride and Richard and Alexander's banter is witty, original and, unusually for a daytime quiz, funny. This one should run and run. 6 of 10 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes How to Win at Pointless | The Aperiodical How to Win at Pointless in Blackboard Bold , Features For the benefit of overseas readers, or British readers in full-time employment, I should briefly explain the concept of daytime TV quiz phenomenon Pointless . The pinnacle of British public service broadcasting, it’s shown at 5.15pm every weekday on BBC One and is hosted by Alexander Armstrong of comedy double-act Armstrong & Miller, and Richard Osman of comedy double-act Armstrong & Osman.

We shall investigate how we can use maths to analyse the show, improve our chances of winning it, and ultimately perhaps improve the show itself. The aim of the game is in each round to give the most obscure correct answer to a given question. Each question ($Q$) has a large set of valid answers $A_Q$, questions perhaps asking contestants to name “Films starring Bruce Willis” or “Countries without an O in their name”. All the questions have been asked to 100 members of the public prior to the quiz (call this set $P$), and they each have 100 seconds to name as many examples as they can (giving rise to a set $A_p\subseteq A_Q$ for each $p\in P$. The contestant gets a point for every one of the 100 people who named their answer $a$: \[ \mbox{score}(a) = \begin{cases} | \{p\in P : a\in A_p \} | & \mbox{if}\ a\in A_Q \\ 100 & \mbox{if}\ a\not\in A_Q.

\end{cases} \] So an obvious answer like Die Hard or France will score a lot of points, and an obscure answer like Striking Distance or Central African Republic will score fewer points. Points are bad (hence the title) so it’s better to dredge up an obscure answer than stick with something safe. However an incorrect answer like Avatar or Mexico scores the maximum 100 points. At the end of the round the contestant with the most points is eliminated. So far this sounds pretty simple; an obscure answer will beat an easy one, and you can decide what answer to give based on the scores of the other contestants so far, and your evaluation of how obscure your answer is and how confident of its correctness you are. There tend to be a few obvious answers scoring in the 60-100 range, a good number of ‘average’ answers worth 20-60, and a ‘long tail’ of lots of obscure answers with sub-20 scores. (In shocking ignorance of the increasing trend towards open data, Pointless never reveals the full set of scores for correct answers, so this assessment is necessarily slightly subjective.) The precise mathematical distribution of Pointless answers.

This distribution should be irrelevant though, since it’s only the relative order of the scores that matters. But this isn’t quite it, because the game is played in teams: four sets of two players ($T_i; i=1,\dots,4; |T_i|=2$). Both players in each team give an answer to the same question, and their scores are combined, with the highest-scoring team eliminated. Now, when I say ‘combined’, what I of course mean is added — $\mathrm{score}(a_1,a_2) = \mathrm{score}(a_1) + \mathrm{score}(a_2)$. But it’s worth reflecting on the fact that this clearly isn’t the only way to combine two numbers (although it is the way that tends to predominate on game shows). Here the choice leads to some interesting results — and now the distribution of the answers along the 1-100 score range is crucial. An answer worth 80 and one worth 90 are both very obvious, and you might be hard-pressed to guess which answer would get which score.

But there’s a world of difference between an answer worth 10, which will still be moderately well known, and an answer worth one point which is very obscure indeed. But Team A scoring 80+10=90 with an obvious answer and an alright one, beats Team B scoring 90+1=91 with an obvious answer and a brilliant one. Addition seems not to be properly rewarding what should be good gameplay. This suggests that the best strategy to win at Pointless in general must be to play it safe: when trying to decide between an okay but safe answer, and one which is very good if right but possibly wrong, pick the safe answer, since its slightly higher score is unlikely to make the difference. This is compounded by the fact that the only aim in the round is not to come last, and a 100-scoring wrong answer is likely to be fatal (often there are no two correct answers that score over 100 in total). This is somewhat disappointing news, since it goes against the ethos of the show, which is to “plumb the depths of general knowledge”.

The show is even named after the elusive ultra-obscure 0-point answers, and getting them is rewarded by a small addition to the jackpot prize (probably not enough to affect players’ motivations in the above). Now, it would be no good if all that could be got out of rigorous mathematical analysis of tea-time quiz formats was some admittedly well-founded sniping, so let’s see if we can use what we’ve learned to address these concerns. From a format point of view tennis would be better if was best of 9 sets, first to 4 games in each set. Fairer, more exciting, more jeopardy — Richard Osman (@richardosman) July 8, 2012 I’m sure pointless co-host/producer Richard Osman will not mind me suggesting ways to improve the format of a popular British institution… Pointless 2.0 The conundrum outlined above makes logical sense, because the scores in Pointless are essentially proportions: the percentage of the population that knows the answer you give.

And the usual way to combine proportions is to multiply them rather than add them: $\mathrm{score}(a_1,a_2) = \mathrm{score}(a_1) \cdot \mathrm{score}(a_2)$. On this method, Team A scores 800 for their mediocre answers, and Team B just 90 for theirs. (Alternatively we could add the scores after taking their logarithms, but strangely, few quiz formats seem to go for this mechanism.) The team’s score could then be seen as replicating the proportion of the population that knew both of their answers, reflecting the joint skill of the team. But we can do better still. There’s no need to approximate the proportion that knew both answers.

The question was actually put to 100 people, so we can award the team points according to the number of the 100 people who gave both of the team’s responses in their 100 seconds: \[\mathrm{score}(a_1,a_2) = \begin{cases} \left| \{p\in P : A_Q\cap\{a_1,a_2\}\subseteq A_p\} \right| & \mbox{if}\ A_Q\cap\{a_1,a_2\}\neq\emptyset \\ 100 & \mbox{otherwise.} \end{cases}\] This would add an extra layer of subtlety to the game, since you can try and pick a pair of answers that don’t ‘go together’ (scuttling the popular tactic of taking inspiration from previous answers, for example picking a sequel to a film that scored well for your teammate). Here’s how it would work: Paul’s Humble Proposition for Improving the Scoring System for the TV Quiz Pointless The first player in the team gives an answer in the normal way, and the tower descends as usual to reveal their score.

The second player gives their answer, and the tower starts at the team’s current score, representing the subset of the 100 people who gave the first player’s answer. The tower descends until it reaches the number of people who gave both answers, and this is the team’s final score. The team with the highest score is eliminated. Here is a brief summary of the reasons that my method is superior to the current system: Does not reward two average answers better than one good and one slightly-less-average answer; Removes the unsatisfactory situation where a team’s second answer is irrelevant because the team’s score is more than 100 ahead of all teams yet to play; Introduces a second level of tactics in choosing answers with a low intersection; Maintains the conceptual link between a team’s score and the 100 people; Increases the cachet of a ‘pointless’ answer since a team scoring one is unbeatable. (Though clearly ties where each team gives a 0-point answer would be broken by the value of the other answer.) Winning Money After the first two rounds, the two remaining teams can confer between themselves and give a single joint answer, so the above doesn’t apply.

The winning team goes forward to play the jackpot round, in which a cash prize can be won. The prize starts at £1000, rising by £250 whenever a pointless answer is given, and an extra £1000 is added at the start of each show, so the jackpot keeps building as it is not won. This prize mechanism is essentially lifted from the BBC’s previous daytime quiz hit Eggheads, where a team of contestants tries to beat the eponymous resident panel of top quizzers. There the conceit makes some sense, as the prize will build if the Eggheads are ‘on form’, and it lessens the sense that they are robbing the competing quiz plebs of cash, instead merely redistributing it only to the most deserving 1 . On Pointless this device only serves to make the prize basically random, since each game is independent. But there’s an added wrinkle. Any team on the show that doesn’t make it to the jackpot round on their first appearance competes again on the next show.

Of course, this means if you lose your first show and the winners don’t claim the jackpot (they usually don’t) the prize money comes with you to the next show and you have another crack at it. And if the prize was at its lowest, £1000, in your first game, it will have doubled for your second appearance (and even if the team that beats you does win the money, your jackpot has not lowered). This leads to the interesting scenario that, if you find yourself in the last two teams looking at a jackpot of £1000, and you rate yourselves as having a better than 50% chance of winning a given show, you can actually increase your expected takings by throwing the match and returning to have a go at a bigger prize. (Of course this would be very unsportsmanlike and we do not recommend you actually do this, unless you are playing against us.) A puzzle Finally, here is a puzzle I wrote some time ago as a sort of tribute to the show: As explained above, four teams compete in each episode and any team which does not win plays again on the next episode (but do not return a third time).

So on any episode, between zero and three of the teams competing may be ‘returning teams’. There are nine shows left in the series, and the producers would like there to be no teams due to return on the first episode of the next series, as this creates logistical difficulties. Richard Osman is preparing the questions for the last nine episodes. Richard is able to rig the questions for each episode in one of two ways, either (i) filling the questions with facts that were mentioned in passing in the previous show, so that a returning team will definitely win (if there is one); or (ii) filling the show with questions whose correct answers were contradicted by a secret campaign of misinformation in the previous show, ensuring that a new team wins. Unfortunately, he cannot remember how many returning pairs will compete in the next episode, and must rig all nine episodes in advance of their being filmed. Can he rig the questions in such a way as to guarantee that no teams are awaiting their second go when the series ends?

A concern that seems not to trouble anyone at The Chase [ ↩ ] Pointless (game show) | Encyclopedia Wikia | Fandom powered by Wikia Edit The object of the game is for contestants not only to provide correct answers, but also provide the most obscure possible correct answers. The game features four teams (previously five), each consisting of two contestants. In each round, the team with the highest score is eliminated; the other teams proceed to the next round. In the final round there is the CHANCE TO WIN the jackpot prize. Teams can appear on the show twice (only once if they have made it to the final round on their first attempt). The show's assistant is Richard Osman, styled as Armstrong's "pointless friend". During the course of the game, he gives information about the answers that are given, as well as statistics at the end of each round on the most common and most obscure answers. [3 ] Prior to the show, 100 people are each given 100 seconds to give as many answers as they can to the questions that will be asked to the teams during the show.

Correct answers are assigned a point value equal to the number of panellists who gave them, so that less commonly given answers have lower values than those given by many panellists. Contestants on the show attempt to give answers worth as few points as possible, aiming to have the lowest score amongst the contestants in each round. "Pointless" answers are those correct answers that none of the 100 panellists gave, making them worth zero points. If a contestant manages to obtain a pointless answer prior to the final round, £250 is added to the JACKPOT . An incorrect answer adds 100 points to the contestant's score. The format consists of two elimination rounds, a head-to-head round and the final round. If two teams are tied for the highest point value at the end of the first or second round, a sudden-death round occurs, with the highest-scoring team losing. The couple that wins the head-to-head round are awarded a Pointless trophy and the CHANCE TO WIN the jackpot by guessing a pointless answer. If the contestants fail to find a pointless answer in the final round, the jackpot rolls over to the next show and is increased by £1,000.

In the celebrity shows, the jackpot always starts at £2,500 but it will not be rolled over to the following show, and the jackpot will be reset to £2,500. For specials, the jackpot starts at £5,000 and goes up by £500 for each pointless answer but like with the regular celebrity shows, the jackpot does not roll over to the following show. Four episodes are recorded in one day. [4 ] Pointless was extended for another 204 episodes, giving three more series taking the total commissioned to 13 in February 2014. A further 24 celebrity episodes were also ordered. [5 ] On the edition aired 29 July 2015, Richard Osman jokingly named the show's theme tune 'Approaching Teatime' in reference to the Mastermind theme tune 'Approaching Menace'. Format Edit The format and gameplay changed slightly between series. The game consists of initial elimination rounds (three in the first series, two in subsequent series) to whittle the starting lineup down to the two teams who contest the head-to-head; the winning team of the head-to-head plays in the Final.

Elimination rounds Edit The teams are given a subject such as geography or sport. Each team chooses one contestant from their team to answer the question first. Then the question within the subject is revealed. The order of play is determined by drawing lots in advance of recording. Play starts with the person at the podium nearest to Armstrong and ends at the farthest podium; this forms what is known as the "first pass". Then, the contestants at each podium switch to the second contestant, and the order is then reversed for the "second pass". During each of these rounds, teams may not confer. Teams gain points depending on how many people answered the question with that answer. If the contestant gives an incorrect answer, they are awarded the maximum 100 points. At the end of each round, the team with the highest score is eliminated from the game. In the event of a tie, the tied teams each give an extra answer each until the deadlock is broken and the team with the highest points eliminated. The teams are allowed to confer in the tie-break. To complete each round, Osman reveals all the pointless answers, or lowest popular three if there are no pointless answers, plus the top three answers, which would be worth the highest amount to any contestant.

There are five different formats of the elimination round which can be played: the first was introduced in the first series (and was the only version used in that run), with subsequent series introducing variant formats. The original format has open-ended questions: contestants are given the question and a free choice of answer—no prompts or preset answers are shown. If the contestant's answer is correct, they score according to the poll results; an incorrect answer scores 100 points. In the first series, this game was played three times, in each of the elimination rounds, then in subsequent episodes the game would be played no more than once. A variant of this format was introduced in series 7, where a list of categories appears on the board after a question and contestants can give any answer that fitted into any of those categories (for example, they could name any member that was in any band on the list). Contestants usually identify the intended category along with their answer, though (unlike in the endgame) they are not required to do so and they will be CREDITED for a correct answer even if they attribute it to the wrong category. This variant enables the question setters to either combine several smaller categories into a round (e.g.

the films of several different actors) or narrow down a wider category (for example, by limiting answers to those starting with certain letters). The possible answers format, introduced as the new second-elimination-round format in series 2 and dropped in series 6, gave the question and a board of seven potential answers; each contestant in turn would pick one of the answers shown, scoring accordingly. Following the first pass, Osman would reveal the value of the remaining answers. The other team members would have a new set of answers to choose from. Each set of answers would include at least one pointless answer and at least one incorrect answer. Usually, the incorrect answer had some indirect link (often humorous) back to the question. As only the provided answers needed to be verified, this question format allowed categories to be used where no commonly-agreed definitive list of correct answers existed. The third format, clues and answers, was introduced in series 3. The teams are given a two-part subject, such as "Famous Battles and their Countries", and then a list of names relating to part of the question (for example, a list of historical battles).

The contestants must select an item from the list and give the corresponding half of the answer (in this case, the modern-day country where the battle took place). All the options have a correct answer, and a more obscure answer will score fewer points. An incorrect answer to any question scores 100 points. (If the question was " The Battle of Hastings ", the correct answer, "United Kingdom", would score 92 points, as most panellists would know this answer.) After the first pass, all the correct answers and their scores are revealed, with a fresh board of names for the second pass. Unlike the "possible answers" format, there is no guarantee that there will be a pointless answer on the board. Seven clues are provided on each pass if this format is played in the first round, six if played in the second round. A fourth format, linked categories, introduced in series 5, provides the teams with two closely related categories (e.g. "Boy Bands" and "Rock Bands"). The first category is played on the first pass (by the teams' first contestant), and the second category is played on the second pass (by the second contestants).

The questions are still played in an open-ended format and, so far, this format has only been played in the first round. It was rarely used and is no longer played. A fifth format, introduced in series 7, shows the contestants a singular picture containing many people or objects (e.g. cartoon characters) and they had to identify the lowest-scoring person/object in it. This is only occasionally used and replaces an "original format" round when it does appear. The games which were played in each series were arranged as follows: Series 1 used three rounds of "original format". Series 2 used a round of "original format" and a round of "possible answers". Series 3 used a first round of either "original format" or "possible answers", and a second round of either "possible answers" or "clues and answers" ("possible answers" would not be played twice in the same show). Series 4 and Series 5 used a first round of either "original format" or "possible answers", and a second round of "clues and answers". As mentioned above, in series 5, the first round was occasionally replaced by the "linked categories" round.

Series 6 saw the "possible answers" round scrapped. The two elimination rounds are "original format" and "clues and answers" in either order. As mentioned above, starting in series 7, the "original format" round would occasionally be replaced by the singular picture round. Whatever the format, the two teams remaining from the elimination rounds would go forward to the head-to-head round. Head-to-head round Edit The lowest scoring team overall is given a choice of two categories and picks one, they are allowed to confer. Each team takes it in turns to give as many correct answers as possible to the single question while still keeping their scores as low as possible. The round ends when one team goes above 100 points, after both teams have had the same number of turns. If both teams go above 100, then the team that is nearest to 100 goes through to the final. Series 2–5 Edit The format of the head-to-head changed from series 2 to a multi-question best-of-five (best-of-three from series 3). The remaining two teams face off in a head-to-head battle. The team who acquired the fewest points in the first two rounds gets to go first.

A question is asked which has a minimum of 4 answers, then the teams get to confer and give one answer in turn. The scores for both answers are then revealed and the team with the lower score get a point and the opportunity to answer first on the next question. The first team to get three points (2 points from series 3) wins the Head to Head and enters the final. Series 6–present Edit The head-to-head format kept its previous format of a multi-question best-of-three, but each question is in a "clues and answers" format. There are three kinds of question in this round: A picture question, which up until series 10 was always the first question in this round, unless a picture question was used in either of previous rounds. (From series 10, it is sometimes played as the second question instead.) Five pictures on a common theme are shown, labelled A to E, and contestants must identify the subject of the picture (for example, if the theme is waterfalls , "A, Angel Falls " would be a possible way for a pair to answer). Facts about a subject.

Five clues to these facts (essentially questions about the subject) are presented, and each pair must give an answer to one of them Word puzzles. The answers are typically titles of works, quotations, or names of people, and the clue might be an anagram, an initialism, or all words except one of the quote or title. For example, if the theme is Shakespeare quotes, a typical clue might be "Fire burn and cauldron ____", to which the contestants must supply the missing word "bubble" After both contestants have submitted an answer, the scores are revealed, and the lowest scoring pair wins the point, as per normal. Final Edit The aim of the Final is to get one pointless answer to win the JACKPOT . For reaching the final the team receives a "coveted" (as Armstrong always describes it) Pointless trophy, regardless of what happens in the final. Any team that makes it through to the final cannot return for the next show, even if it is their first appearance. The trophy is made from a 120mm tall block of optical quality crystal, 3D laser-engraved with a stack of 100 Pointless discs and thePointless logo.

It is manufactured by Laser Crystal Ltd, based in Poole , Dorset . The team is given a choice of five categories (three in Series 1–5, and in these series, the categories stayed either for 5 days or until they were picked. Since Series 6, a new set is seen every day). After choosing one, they get the question, and have 60 seconds to give three answers for that category. If any individual response is a pointless answer, the team wins the JACKPOT and the JACKPOT is reset to £1,000 for the following game. If not, £1,000 is added to the JACKPOT . A record jackpot of £24,750 was won in the episode broadcast 8 March 2013. Beginning with broadcast episode 501,[ citation needed ] which aired 7 June 2013, a new format was introduced for the final jackpot. Contestants are given four categories to select from, and are given 60 seconds to find a pointless answer by picking three answers from any or all of three subcategories.

Development Edit The show's format (originally to be called "Obviously") was conceived by Tom Blakeson, Simon Craig, David Flynn, Nick Mather, Richard Osman and Shaun Parry, producers at Endemol UK , in 2009. They envisaged it as a "reverse Family Fortunes ... REWARDING obscure knowledge, while allowing people to also give obvious answers....a quiz which could be sort of highbrow and populist simultaneously". [6 ] Osman was not originally intended to be co-presenter, primarily fulfilling the role only as part of a demonstration laid on for the BBC. However the BBC executives asked him to continue when they commissioned the first series. [6 ] Osman then approached comedian Alexander Armstrong, a peer of Osman's during their university days, to be the main presenter. [6 ]Armstrong, who the previous year had been lined up to present Channel 4 's Countdown only to back out fearing being pigeon-holed as a presenter, [7 ] agreed to present what was perceived as a lower-profile show, with the presence of Osman helping to convince him.

[6 ] The first series aired on the BBC's second channel BBC Two between August and October 2009, with the corporation announcing on the day of the final episode's broadcast that they had commissioned a second series. The series' audience had peaked at 1.69 million viewers, 17.2% of audience share for the timeslot, [3 ] while averaging around 1 million viewers per episode. [6 ] The second series saw audiences grow modestly and the format was tweaked prior to the start of series three, reducing the number of rounds and giving more time for banter between the hosts which had previously been edited out. [6 ] The change saw strong viewer growth with the show subsequently moved to the BBC's main channel BBC One in 2011. [6 ] [8 ] By 2013, the programme was averaging 3.6 million viewers daily, and starting to gain more viewers than ITV game show, The Chase , which also airs in roughly the same time SLOT . [8 ] Transmissions This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.

(June 2014)===Regular series=== Series Edit On 26 February 2014, the Pointless Quiz app was released for iOS, [21 ] with an iPad , Android and Amazon version released a few months later. The app features animated versions of Armstrong and Osman and allows the player to tackle questions in a similar format to the TV show. Three books have been released of the show, The 100 Most Pointless Things in the World, The 100 Most Pointless Arguments in the World and The Very Pointless Quiz Book. All three were released by Coronet . In the books, Armstrong and Osman give their insight to pointless matters. Three editions of the official board game have also been released, plus two mini-sized versions, each of which contain updated questions. Pointless - Show News, Reviews, Recaps and Photos - TV.com EDIT Alexander Armstrong presents Pointless, a game show where, unlike the others, it is the lowest scoring teams who proceed into the subsequent rounds.

Before an episodes is recorded 100 people are given questions which can have multiple answers (e.g: Name countries beginning with D), then the contestants answer and the points they receive is equal to how many of the 100 said it. So they need an aswer that few of the 100 gave, if none of the 100 said it the contestant gets 0 points (aka 'Pointless'). It was played by five teams of two in the first season and then four teams of two from the second season onwards. It originally aired on BBC-2 up to episode 135 and then BBC-1 from episode 136.

Merchandise Pointless - UKGameshows Pointless Broadcast Brighter Pictures for BBC Two, 24 August to 7 October 2009 (30 episodes in 1 series) Remarkable Television for BBC Two, 8 March 2010 to 22 December 2010 (80 episodes in 2 series) Remarkable Television for BBC One, 14 March 2011 to present (but see Trivia below) as Pointless Celebrities: Remarkable Television for BBC One, 4 July 2011 to present Synopsis Cross the surveys of Family Fortunes with the inverse scoring of Beat the Nation and you get... well, you get Topranko! , more or less. Or, if you're BBC Two and pitching for the daytime audience, you get this. If it was us, we probably wouldn't tempt fate (and TV critics) by calling it Pointless, though. A wide view of the Pointless set.

So anyway, Endemol — or rather their appointed agents, specifically market research company Redshift Research (replaced by Morar Consulting in 2016) — has given 100 people, 100 seconds to name as many things as they can in a given category. These categories are fairly varied, although categories relating to countries and their languages, locations, affiliations etc, do seem to appear far more often than any other category. In the studio, the contestants only have to come up with one answer at a time, and (provided it's a valid answer) they will score points, from zero to 100, depending on how many people gave that answer in the survey. The aim is to give the most obscure answers, and thereby receive the lowest score. Ideally, one would give an answer that nobody gave in the survey - a "pointless" answer - thus scoring nothing at all, and incidentally adding £250 to the jackpot (which starts at £1000 and goes up by £1000 each day it remains unwon).

The show's round structure changed considerably from series 1 to series 2, although the basic set-up of asking contestants to guess obscure answers from those provided by 100 surveyed people remained the same. As the numbers go down, the audience gets ready to cheer. Series 1 Five pairs start. Each of the first three rounds has the same gameplay: a general category (say, "film" or "politics") is given, to allow each pair to decide which of them will go first in that round. Once the order has been decided, the actual question is given, e.g. "Films directed by Steven Spielberg" or "British Prime Ministers Since 1900" and Richard Osman duly puts the categories in context by confirming exactly what's required and the main source from which the answers are drawn. Alexander Armstrong asks the first player in each pair in turn to give an answer fitting that category; a valid answer scores as outlined above, while an invalid answer scores a penalty of 100 points. After the first player from each pair has given an answer, the second player steps forward to give their answer.

The player from the pair who gave their answer last in the first section gives their answer first, the player from the pair who gave their answer fourth in the first section answers second and so on, thereby limiting any unfairness resulting from being the last to answer. Once both players in each pair have answered, the pair with the highest score is eliminated, however each pair is allowed to return for a second and final chance on the next day's show. In the event of a tie-break, each pair must provide another answer, over which they can confer. Each round is treated as a separate contest, with the scores starting afresh from zero each time. The red line where everyone says "STOP!". After three rounds, the two surviving pairs play the "head to head" round; the scoring is as before, but now conferring is allowed and encouraged. Also the pair who scored lower over the previous three rounds gets to choose one of two categories.

(They also get to choose whether to go first or second, though it seems unlikely that a few seconds' extra thinking time would make up for the disadvantage of always having second "pick", so anyone with their wits about them will choose to go first.) The pairs get an equal number of turns, and the round ends when one or both pairs go over 100 points. The higher-scoring team is eliminated and the other wins the "coveted" Pointless trophy. The 21st century's new Wipeout paperweight. The winning team also gets to go for the cash jackpot, which entails picking one of three categories and then giving a Pointless answer to whatever the question is. They are given up to one minute to come up with three answers, however they only need one of them to be Pointless to win the jackpot, but even so it's a very difficult endgame and is rarely won. Oddly, whereas the pairs eliminated earlier in the game can return for second try the next day, the pair who reach the final are not allowed to return the next day, regardless of whether they win or not, and immaterial of whether it is their first time on the show.

A problem (which is fixed in series 2) with this section arises from contestants tending to give what they consider their best answer first, which can lead to a bit of an anticlimax if this doesn't win, and their remaining two answers are obviously duds. Series 2 The first major change is a reduction from 5 pairs of contestants to 4, allowing more time for Alexander and Richard to, basically, be funny. Apparently, when Alexander Armstrong saw the first series, he was so shocked that all the off-script banter had been edited out, he begged the producers to keep it in. Other than this, round one is identical to the first three rounds of the previous series; everyone gets to give one answer each and the highest-scoring pair are knocked out. Onto round 2, and they start to shake things up a bit. Sort of. The format is identical, but the contestants are presented with a list of seven options to choose from. Each list, we are told, contains at least one pointless answer (oooooh), but at least one incorrect answer as well (booooo). A new list of 7 is presented after the first three contestants have given their answer.

Whilst this change is presumably supposed to trick the viewer into thinking there is more variety going on than there really is, it does give them the opportunity to ask slightly harder questions (or questions for which there is no definitive list of all possible correct answers, e.g. "stringed instruments"), as well as to give contestants who have absolutely no idea a chance. (A not too uncommon scenario in the first series would be for a contestant, needing a good answer to stay in, having no idea and either playing it safe or coming up with something ridiculous, neither of which made for particularly exciting telly.) Another result of the change (and you can decide for yourself whether this is a good or bad thing) is that it may be possible to work out which is the pointless answer simply by a process of elimination. As fully-paid-up members of the shout-the-answer-at-the-telly club, we also have to report that picking out a pointless answer from a selection provided, is nowhere near as satisfying a playalong experience as coming up with pointless answers yourself. After the second set of answers the highest scoring pair are, as usual, shown the door, and we move onto round three, which for those of you who have been paying attention, is the Head to Head.

Here they have made arguably the most improvement. Rather than the single question, to-and-fro, first-to-100-except-not-if-the-other-team-go-over-by-more format of series 1, we have a best-of-5, where each pair gives one answer and the one that scores lower earns a point. This is quite a clever move on several counts. Firstly, we get more questions, which is always a good thing, especially when in the previous series we might have to watch for five or more minutes as contestants gave answers to just one question. It also makes the round much more dramatic. Once both pairs have given their answer, we have a split-screen Pointless-o-meter. Pointless's homage to the Twin Towers. One pair's answer is checked, and one half of the Pointless-o-meter goes down (or turns into an X, as for any other wrong answer). We then swap to the other team and do the same thing.

This makes every question at least a little bit exciting; unlike series 1 where either the first few were pretty uninteresting (because no-one was going to get close to 100 for a while), or the game was (pretty much) over immediately when it became apparent that one pair didn't know anything at all about 'pre-1980 BBC Oxford weathermen'. One benefit that must surely have been felt by the researchers, if not by the viewers (and certainly not by the contestants), is that with only two answers being given to any question, there is much more scope for lists with very few members, some examples of which will show up once the series has aired (though one example to get you started is "members of The Famous Five", of which there are, well, five). Although one downside to this is that occasionally they choose a list where many people will know all the answers (such as "words that GNVQ stands for"), in which case the pair that went first will (usually) have a huge advantage. The team that gets to three points first wins, and goes on to the Pointless final, which remains unchanged, except that contestants are asked to rank their three answers in order of confidence.

This cleverly solves the problem of contestants giving their 'best' answer first, which led to some anticlimax in the first series. Series 3 More changes were afoot in the third series. The second round was changed again, so that instead of a straight list of things in a category, players are now presented with what is essentially a list of trivia questions on a theme - for example, they may be given a list of movie taglines and asked to name the movie, or a list of characters from children's literature and asked to name the book. A wrong answer results in a 100 point penalty, a right answer scores in the usual fashion. The first round sometimes follows the standard first-round format, and sometimes the old second-round format. The head-to-head round has been reduced to best-of-three, but the jackpot round is unchanged.

Series 5 A further variant on round one was introduced in what apparently was Series 5 (which ran on from series 4 without break or acknowledgement - the only clues being an update on the cut-off point for time-sensitive subjects and the fact that the Coveted Pointless Trophy appears to have been very subtly redesigned with a slightly larger volume of clear glass at the top), in which two related categories are played, one on each pass, e.g. the first time this was played, the categories were "Boy Bands" and "Rock Bands", with the players on the first pass naming Westlife hits and those on the second pass naming Status Quo hits. Considering how rapidly the show is burning through categories (and there does seem to be a bit of desperation creeping in to the head-to-head questions with subsets of previous categories turning up with increasing regularity), it seems a bit strange to suddenly introduce a game format that uses up even more. Later changes Alright, we admit it, we've lost track of where the series breaks are.

Anyway, over the next couple of years, the format was gradually refined and by Autumn 2013, the format had settled down to the one we now know, in which one of the first two rounds will be a category question (or sometimes an "identify people or things in this picture" question), and the other is Q&A. The two-linked-subjects and pick-from-a-list questions are long gone. The head-to-head is now a best-of-three question-and-answer round, and usually comprises a picture question, a "clues to five facts about x" question and some sort of "disguised words" question, where five things in a category are given as anagrams, or with missing letters. A few other variations are sometimes used. The picture question normally comes first, unless there has already been a picture question earlier in the show. For a while in series 10 (September/October 2013) they experimented with not always having the picture question first, but it soon went back to normal.

Key moments There was some rather paranoid censorship in the third series - the film titles Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and Inglourious Basterds (both incorrect answers to their respective questions) suffered post-production bleeps. You wouldn't get that happening on The Weakest Link . When Inglourious Basterds was offered as an answer to "Quentin Tarantino Films" in series 8 (correctly this time), the contestant had to whisper the second word in Xander's ear. (Shouldn't it have been Richard's ear?) Catchphrases "You just didn't have that pointless [subject] knowledge" (series 1 and 2) (When demonstrating the wrong answer graphics) "You really don't want to see that..." "Let's see if it's right, and if so, how many people said it" "It's good!

It's very good!" "Well done if you got that at home." "He's my Pointless friend - he's Richard." (Usually preceded by some surreal epithet or metaphor relating to Richard's apparent mastery of obscure facts.) "Great contestants!" (said about most contestants when they leave) Some of Richard's rules explanations are given so frequently that we expect the audience to shout out the last words with him. For instance, "We're looking for any feature film made for cinematic release in which {actor} is given an acting credit. No TV films, short films or documentaries - but voice credits do count" "And by 'country', we mean a sovereign state that's a member of the UN in its own right." Alexander also has various stock phrases to introduce the show, of which arguably the best is "Welcome to Pointless - the show where the lowest scorers are the biggest winners." Theme music Marc Sylvan Trivia During the programme's run, "Central African Republic" has proven to be the most pointless country in the world. In the first series it appeared as a pointless answer to four separate questions: "Countries beginning with C", "African countries", "French-speaking countries" and "national flags with stars on".

And just to rub it in, its capital Bangui was a pointless answer to "Capital cities beginning with B". In the third celebrity special in 2011 appeared as a pointless answer to "Countries with five or more borders" while it was also a pointless answer to "Flags with the colour green on them" and "Countries that have had a female leader" (i.e. an elected one) in series 5. Furthermore, in series 6, it was a pointless answer when its prime minister Faustin-Archange Touadéra was amongst the heads listed in "Leaders and their countries". One sharp correspondent noted a bit of a gaffe, or at least an inconsistency, during a round on "Tudor and Stuart Monarchs of Great Britain". Mary, Queen of Scots was ruled to be an incorrect answer, because she was only queen of Scotland ("the clue is in the name," said Richard). However, monarchs of England before the union of the crowns were allowed, so strictly speaking, she should have counted as well (along with a number of other pre-union Scottish monarchs). All of which leads us to ponder how well contestants would fare if faced with the topic of pre-union Scottish monarchs.

There's only one way to find out... and we don't mean fight. The largest amount of money won on the show is £20,250. This was won on 23 January 2013 ("Phillip Pullman books": The Shadow in the North). This narrowly beat the previous record of £20,000, won on 20 November 2012 ("Countries whose name contains only one vowel": Panama). The next largest jackpots were £15,500, won on 4 August 2011 ("Marlon Brando Films": The Island of Doctor Moreau); £12,750, which was won on 29 March 2012 (Toy Story films voice actors: Timothy Dalton); and £12,250, which was won twice in the second series, firstly on 10 March 2010 ("National trails of England and Wales": The Ridgeway), and again on 16 April 2010 ("Countries that use a dollar": Tuvalu).

On 3 September 2010, contestants David and Susan received the unenviable honour of being the first contestants in Pointless history to receive 100 points, but not as a result of giving an incorrect answer. Given a list of possible answers, the contestants had to answer with what type of food they thought each one was. Contestant David answered that Parmesan was a type of cheese and was perfectly correct, however unfortunately for him and his wife Susan, all of the 100 people surveyed also knew it was a type of cheese, meaning they scored 100 points, despite answering correctly. However, thanks to a strong performance from Susan, the couple still managed to win both the round and the show - though not the jackpot. To date, two other 100-point answers have been given. One was by contestant MJ on 19 February 2013, when the category was "Capital Cities" and the clue "Hosted the 2012 Olympics". (Oh, and the answer was "London", as if you didn't know.) She and her dad survived the round, but didn't win the show.

The other was given by Antony Worrall Thompson on a chefs edition of Pointless Celebrities broadcast 31 August 2013, when all 100 people knew the foodstuff omitted from the film title [blank], I Shrunk The Kids. Xander was amazed by this and claimed he'd never seen it happen before - given that the copyright date on the end of the show was 2012, it's just possible that the episode was recorded before MJ's, but you'd think he might recall the previous occasion. On the first pass in the same round, Worrall Thompson's team mate Rustie Lee correctly stated that 'Peach' was the missing word in James and the Giant [blank]. However this scored 89 points, giving the pair a total score of 189, the highest score ever recorded on the programme, without giving an incorrect answer. It's right, but it's not good: the scoring column lights up for a 100-point correct answer On 21 July 2011, the first round subject was "U2 Singles" and amazingly all of the first four contestants gave incorrect answers, resulting in the row of 100s seen below.

Surprisingly (and to the relief of all concerned), the return pass went off without a hitch. For the record, none of these are U2 singles: "Red Red Wine" (the contestant admitted she always got U2 and UB40 confused), "Hello Hello" (the player was thinking of "Vertigo", which her partner gave on the second pass), "Goodbye" (which was a flat-out guess) and "The Joshua Tree" (a U2 album, not a single). This happened again on 27 March 2012 with the subject "Robert Redford films". On 26 October 2015, the second round, on naming the acts who recorded hits with "Wish" in the title, produced no correct answers at all, with all three pairs scoring 200, then when allowed to confer, all failing yet again (one pair even guessed that the 1978 hit "Wishing On A Star" was by Val Doonican, despite Xander already having let slip that the singer was female!).

They ended up having to bring out a back-up question (naming composers in Classic FM's Hall of Fame) and the two teams that progressed did so with scores of 301 and 303. The best opening round ever. During the third series, the show was taken off air for a couple of weeks to make way for coverage of the 2010 Commonwealth Games. By a pleasing coincidence, the very first subject when it returned was "Realms of the Commonwealth", which was suddenly very easy for anyone who'd been watching that timeslot. This couldn't have been planned, because the series wasn't even recorded with the intention that it would go out around the time of the Games, but was brought forward as an emergency replacement for the planned show Perfection , which had to be re-shot due to a production error. The fourth series consisted of 60 episodes, which were shown in two separate runs. The first 25 episodes were shown in Spring 2011 in the usual 4:30pm weekday slot on BBC Two.

However when the remaining 35 episodes came to be shown in Summer of the same year, the programme was promoted to the 5:15pm weekday slot on BBC One, home for many years to The Weakest Link , which by that point had already been axed, and was demoted back to BBC Two, taking the slot vacated by Pointless. The first episodes to be shown on BBC One were five celebrity specials, from 4 to 8 July 2011, after which, the remaining 35 episodes from the fourth series were shown from 11 July 2011. To mark the programme's 200th edition on 30 September 2011, four couples who had previously appeared on the programme, but had scored the maximum of 200 points were invited back to have another go. Because we do get asked about this... yes, the computer is just a prop. That's why, when Richard has to read anything, it's always off a sheet of paper. And because we get asked about this, too... the height of the Coveted Pointless Trophy is five inches.

Apparently the producers have tried to interest the BBC in a children's version but for some reason Auntie Beeb won't take it. Merchandise

Question: Who introduces the TV Quiz Show "Pointless"?
Answer: ALEXANDER ARMSTRONG